Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Story & Character Discussion Problems with Halsin's character, advances, LI and general character interactions, etc.

Thank you for positing the questions and for taking the time to read my response. I thought the questions were good and I spent most of my workday pondering them. Im still not sure I was able to fully and clearly express myself but I appreciate your time none the less. Lets hope the thread will continue to have relatively calm discourse similar to what you and I have had.

I should've known something was off when I saw the last Panel From Hell, all the stuff we could've gotten instead of horniness smh.

Very few people defend him asking to join after he has been rejected. It's the crux of the issues many people have. It comes out of nowhere and is nothing like the behavior of romanced Halsin, who when told you don't want him to join, he's chill and says he'll find someone else.

We're mostly in agreement on that point, so we should probably move on from that particular aspect.

Depends if the usual suspects or someone new comes up and defends that action of his, it will be brought up again.

Same, just with Astarion-Origin and romanced Gale - which can give the whole thing just an additional issue - but before even entering anything that resembles a business proposal, Halsin makes his interest in the Drow known (An intriguing pair - or something) and you get the follow up question that he sounds interested, which he takes in a somewhat flirty way, not in a neutral one - and all we wanted to do was find a way into the city. Everything right after setting up a nice dinner date in Waterdeep.

You know, I've just remembered something: when you use Speak to the Dead on Dror Ragzlin and ask where Halsin is he basically tells you that he's "rutting" in a beast cage. Considering what this thread is about it's hilarious in retrospect.

I physically cringed from reading this, dear lord

I just quietly wish I had an option to refuse Halsin joining my party in act 2.

It would’ve solved all the ensuing cringiness and probably made me hate him less since he is no longer forcibly shoved down my throat. Given a choice and having a couple runs without him I might even miss him a bit perhaps. Would be nice.

Considering, that you can refuse the wonderful and far superior druid Jaheira to join, who has story in act 3 and can give you insight and another companion ( well, technically two, I just saw a Luality playthrough, where she killed Raphael with Boo, so I would say, Boo qualifies as his own), but have no way to deny the dead weight druid, that is a strange decision. I mean creepiness aside, but who would sideline all the companions with story attached to them in act 3 for someone, who has literally nothing going on, nothing at all.

I think all companions should be able to be refused. That's Halsin and Shadowheart. You have to take drastic action to remove them from a run.

I honestly never had such issues with Shadowheart. On the couple runs where I wanted to have some rest from her and when I was doing duo run Durge/Gale, it seemed pretty easy to decline her. Harder than others of course.

Halsin however. I feel like Larian actively force me to dislike him. Dropping a companion and having them back on the next run makes things fresh and more enjoyable. I was happy to see everyone back after the duo run. But Halsin is just always there. Suffocating. I solved it for myself by casting Friends cantrip on him 10 times, and feeling like a bad person afterwards, but at least he left without violence. It shouldn’t be like this.

The problem as I see it, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that Halsin is the only character with an exclusive mission that you cannot complete without him. For example, if you dislike Shadowheart, you can simply choose not to recruit her in Act 1, or kill her and take the artifact and you can still fulfill her mission in Act 2. The same goes for Karlach and Mirthana. However, with Halsin, you can't. You're forced to have him standing there in the camp doing nothing to fulfill his mission. The game should provide an alternative method to cure the shadow curse without him, but it doesn't.

Yeah, I mean our character can be a druid that's way more competent than him in a lot of areas and potentially wield more power than he does yet we can't do the ritual using his notes? Couldn't we ask Art Cullagh what Thaniel looks like so we can find him ourselves while our 3 companions who are more than capable of holding their own take care of the undead attacking the portal?

This is a problem, but a bigger one is that after the curse is lifted he still auto invites himself into your party. This is why many people have an issue. No way to refuse him. He does it with “if you want me”, but there is no option to express you actually don’t want him thanks.

And if you lifted the curse, he gives 40 approval and *will* come onto you early in act 3 no matter what. Even if you talked to him maybe twice, regarding Art and Thaniel.

IIRC, if you don't have Astarion recruited (not in your active party, not recruited at all), you can't kill Cazador, and unless I'm misremembering, I don't think you can rescue Duke Ravengard without Wyll being alive either?

....... A villain saying villainous, degrading things about a character is cringe?

I might misremember this - or not get the joke here - but wasn't the comment about Halsin *rotting* in the dungeon/ pens, the thing you usually do when being an unwilling inhabitant of such a place? And while I have never tried it (why would I forsake Astarion's company?) doesn't he show up as Zombie-starion at the ritual if you don't recruit him or hand him over to Gandrel? The Iron Throne and Ansur also hit on other plot points than Wyll's story.

Besides all this, I am mostly puzzled why he doesn't become a recruitable companion right after the party, he just lounges in camp and does not even have reactions to things going on in the other companions' lives, which is very weird. He is there, but kind of not part of the team.

You can both kill Cazador and save Ravengard with neither Astarion nor Wyll recruited. With Cazador Gur will send you there asking to save children and will become your allies for the final battle. I did all this on a duo run, recruited only Gale and no one else - well, and Halsin of course

Did he say "rotting" or "rutting"?

Either way he probably meant it as in Halsin was puttering around in his cell or something. But for me, given some of the topics in this thread, my first thought was on a different kind of rut. Wether or not thats what Ragzlin meant, idk. Probably not but the thought was put in there and I dont like it.

Agree that he should be a recruitable companion after the party! For those that don’t want him in the party, they could also have the choice not to recruit him there.

Because it’s his personal quest, I like that curing the shadow curse requires him. It makes him feel more involved in the story.